Once a subject it seemed no one was talking about, candidates running for the Idaho House of Representatives in next week’s Republican primary are now saying just how they feel about so many children in their state dying from “faith-healing medical neglect.”

Due to the great work of child advocates, such as the nonprofit Protect Idaho Kids, many Idahoans are aware of this life-and-death issue. Tragically, religious exemptions in state laws permit parents who deny their children necessary medical care to avoid prosecution, even in cases of great suffering and death, as long as the parents claim they used only prayer as “treatment.” Learn more about the issue by going here.

With the primary happening on May 15, the Idaho Press-Tribune has posed this question to all candidates running for the state House of Representatives: Canyon County experiences the highest rate of child deaths due to faith healing in the state. How will you address it?Read More »

Gravestone of Pamela Jade Eells who died after she was denied medical care for pneumonia. Pamela had been raised in the extremist faith group, the Followers of Christ, which opposes medical care.

Telling constituents it’s acceptable to deny children needed medical care doesn’t seem like something that would get a politician re-elected. But that’s what’s happening in Idaho.

Child advocates have been imploring lawmakers there to change laws that prevent adults who deny children needed medical care from being prosecuted. The laws apply to people who claim to have only prayed over a sick child rather than take him or her to a doctor or hospital. As a result, there is an unusually high child death rate in one extremist group, the Followers of Christ. Read More »

To love a child is to love life. To nurture a child is to express hope. Children do not exhaust our strength. They allow us to go beyond ourselves and to discover the power of our own creative talents. To be a mother or a father is more than a profession. It is more than a social calling. It is the fulfillment of one of our deepest needs—our need to touch the future and make it live.

—Rabbi Sherwin Wine

A connected and educated populace . . . is bound to be disabused of poisonous beliefs, such as that members of other races and ethnicities are innately avaricious or perfidious; that economic and military misfortunes are caused by the treachery of ethnic minorities; that women don't mind to be raped; that children must be beaten to be socialized; that people choose to be homosexual as part of a morally degenerate lifestyle; that animals are incapable of feeling pain..

—Steven Pinker

There were so many sick children in there and my daughter was very, very ill . . . and I couldn’t bare it. I just went, “Nope, I’m done.” I mean, I just knew I could make these choices for me . . . but I couldn’t make these choices for my children. I just had to get her out.

—Spanky Taylor, 17-year former member of Scientology

You make each day a special day. You know how, by just your being you. There's only one person in this whole world like you. And people can like you exactly as you are.

—Fred Rogers, speaking to his young audience on the TV show "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood"

Everyone has the right to believe what they want to believe, and that right is absolute. But the right to act on one’s religious beliefs is not absolute. . . . .I don’t think that there’s any room under the law for endangering the life of a child. Or under the First Amendment. These laws are not supposed to extend that far.”

— Charles Haynes, Director of the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute